KVR Audio

TheStorm · Post by **TheStorm** » Mon May 09, 2005 2:10 am

I mean, it's clipping, isn't it? A distorted guitar is just controlled clipping, right? Maybe with some compression and/or tone thrown into the mix? What's distortion?

Mutant · Post by **Mutant** » Mon May 09, 2005 2:21 am

http://www.trueaudio.com/at_eetjlm.htm

androidlove · Post by **androidlove** » Mon May 09, 2005 2:28 am

Those harmonic differences account for the "raspy and obnoxious" sound of the solid-state amp in clipping, compared with the much-more-mellow sound of the tube-amp clipping.

Raspy and obnoxious is the sound I love.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Mon May 09, 2005 2:29 am

Check out this thread.

I was asking for a breakdown of distortion effects, and I posted a bunch of links there that I found to good documentation on distortion.

Best place to start is A Musical Distortion Primer.

The basic is that yes, distortion generally means clipping, but clipping can be shaped in various ways for various different kinds of distortion (fuzz, saturation, etc).

Churchy · Post by **Churchy** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:34 am

as far as i knew distorting actually just means altering the signal, but these days it usually means overdriving (clipping)

NAS · Post by **NAS** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:36 am

I was just looking at some source code.
I'll tell you what distortion is about two lines

NAS · Post by **NAS** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:39 am

Churchy is actually right though, Every effect we use really is distortion in one sense but what we are used to is Clipping with filtering (I think)

fxe · Post by **fxe** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:45 am

Actually if you wanted to generalize what distortion is it would be waveshaping not clipping.

NAS · Post by **NAS** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:56 am

Well yeah it is, Come to think of it the first distortion unit i built was in SE using a waveshaper DOH

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Mon May 09, 2005 4:10 am

Distortion adds harmonically related components to the wave form. Harmonically unrelated components are noise. (Hence the well known hifi brand of the 80s Noise And Distortion).

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Mon May 09, 2005 4:55 am

egbert defines 'distortion' correctly. that is, "adding" or
increasing harmonics. (infact no harmonics are added, they
already exist, although at infinite negative amplitude, by theory.)
filter is usually defined as shaping harmonics, that is increasing
and decreasing thier amplitude / adjusting phase.

if you wanted a pretty basic definition, generally
distortion is a invariant function, while a filter is an
iterated / variant function.

sin(n) <-- distortion
n[0] = (n[0] * 0.25) + (n[-1] * 0.75) <-- filter
==
n[0] += (n[-1] - n[0]) * 0.75

What exactly IS distortion, anyway?